The present disclosure relates to animal or human tissue processing, and more particularly, to devices and methods to remove a portion of material from animal or human tissue.
Various tissue-derived products are used to regenerate, repair, or otherwise treat diseased or damaged tissues and organs. Such products can include tissue grafts and/or processed tissues (e.g., acellular tissue matrices from skin, intestine, or other tissues, with or without cell seeding). Such products generally have properties determined by the tissue source (i.e., tissue type and animal from which it originated) and the processing parameters used to produce the tissue products.
Since tissue products are often used for surgical applications and/or tissue replacement or augmentation, the products should support tissue growth and regeneration, as desired for the selected implantation site. To accomplish these goals, the processes for obtaining and processing tissues are selected to avoid unacceptable damage or alteration to the tissues. In addition, it is desirable for the processing and collection methods to be as efficient as possible without unacceptably harming the tissues.
Collection of tissues used to produce tissue products generally includes separation of various tissue components from one another. For example, in order to collect portions of skin, such as dermis, for production of dermal tissue products, it is necessary to separate the dermis from subcutaneous tissues such as fat. Similarly, for other tissues, such as muscle, connective tissue, ligaments, tendons, or any other tissue, it is often necessary to separate the tissue from surrounding tissues before further processing.
Separation of tissues from one another can be time consuming and/or tedious. For example, separation of dermis from subcutaneous fat in large volumes can take significant effort and must be done without causing unacceptable alterations to the dermis.
Accordingly, the present disclosure provides methods and device for separating tissues from one another, including separating subcutaneous fat or other tissues from dermis.